{"id":860429,"date":"2025-07-05T23:11:57","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T04:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/05\/kotakus-biggest-gaming-culture-news-for-the-week-july-05-2025\/"},"modified":"2025-07-05T23:11:57","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T04:11:57","slug":"kotakus-biggest-gaming-culture-news-for-the-week-july-05-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/05\/kotakus-biggest-gaming-culture-news-for-the-week-july-05-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Kotaku\u2019s Biggest Gaming Culture News For The Week July 05, 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Entertainment <\/p>\n

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Image: Microsoft, 11bit Studios, FromSoftware \/ Kotaku, PlayStation \/ Kotaku, The Pok\u00e9mon Company \/ Kotaku, Blizzard Entertainment, Nintendo, Epic Games \/ Kotaku, Romero Games, Screenshot: Rockstar Games \/ Kotaku<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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From mergers to memes, the landscape of interactive entertainment is always in motion. Here\u2019s your cheat sheet for the week\u2019s most important stories in gaming.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer appears at Comic Con Experience (CCXP23) in Brazil.<\/figcaption>
Image: Microsoft<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reports and rumors<\/a><\/span> of massive layoffs at Xbox have been building since late last month, and the first blood has now been spilled. Bloomberg<\/em> reports<\/a><\/span> that Candy Crush <\/em>maker King is cutting 200 employees, or roughly 10 percent of its 2,000-person headcount, while multiple games across various Xbox studios, including the Perfect Dark <\/em>reboot<\/a><\/span>, have been canceled. – Ethan Gach Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Image: 11bit Studios<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Alters<\/em> is a narrative-driven sci-fi survival management sim about a research facility populated by clones. It released in June to positive reviews, with critics praising it for wedding interesting character interactions to the usual management sim churn. Now it\u2019s getting flamed for incorporating AI slop. The studio behind it took to social media to defend itself, saying that a viral screenshot of an LLM text-generating prompt was an isolated incident and was never supposed to be kept in the game. – Ethan Gach Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Image: FromSoftware \/ Kotaku<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I leave Elden Ring Nightreign<\/em> matches<\/a><\/span> all the time. Sometimes I\u2019m playing with friends and we botch the first Evergaol mini-boss<\/a><\/span> at level 2. Sometimes I\u2019m playing with internet randos and the Recluse runs off to farm crystals without telling anyone and we get wiped multiple times by the Perfumer\u2019s crossbow-wielding glass cannon henchmen<\/a><\/span>. Every time I leave, the game warns me not to. \u201cDon\u2019t do it, don\u2019t you dare do it!\u201d it chides me. These are empty threats. I know because I lob them at my kids all the time. I have yet to see any evidence that I\u2019ve actually been penalized for leaving matches, something I\u2019ve occasionally done multiple times in a row. – Ethan Gach Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Image: PlayStation \/ Kotaku<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A big summer sale is currently happening on the PlayStation Store, with a ton of PS5 games discounted to $25 or less. <\/p>\n

Summer means hot weather, sweaty shirts, cookouts, and a bunch of video game deals. Valve is currently running its big Steam summer sale<\/a><\/span>. EA has a big summer sale happening, too. And PlayStation, not wanting to be left out, has also flipped the switch on a bunch of big summer deals for PS5 games. – Zack Zwiezen Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Image: The Pok\u00e9mon Company \/ Kotaku<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My eyes! What is this monstrosity?! Fetch me wooden stakes, holy water, silver bullets, shotguns, anything<\/em>! Or has the Pok\u00e9mon Company (TPCi) hired David Cronenberg to design its latest batch of plushies? – John Walker Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Image: Blizzard Entertainment<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Overwatch 2 <\/em>has been on a hot streak as of late, with excellent additions like the Perks system<\/a><\/span> that lets you upgrade a hero throughout a match, and the Stadium mode<\/a><\/span> that lets you create off-the-wall builds for each hero over the course of a seven-round game. The shooter just entered its 17th season, bringing with it a retro-game-themed battle pass, new heroes and maps for Stadium, and map voting across all modes. All of that sounds good on paper, but the addition of map voting and the way Blizzard implemented the system has split the community. After playing around with it myself, I yearn for the days of getting randomly assigned a map before a match. – Kenneth Shepard Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Image: Nintendo<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Few moments hit on the original SNES like your first time hearing \u201cStickerbush Symphony\u201d while shooting through a labyrinth of towering thorny beanstalks in Donkey Kong Country 2<\/em>‘s Bramble Blast levels. It\u2019s one of the best songs to ever appear in a game, alongside one of the most evocative 16-bit platforming levels ever devised. That incredible mashup hasn\u2019t been repeated since, until Donkey Kong Bananza<\/em>. – Ethan Gach Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Screenshot: Rockstar Games \/ Kotaku<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Red Dead Online<\/em><\/a><\/span>,<\/em> Rockstar\u2019s other <\/em>live-service game that isn\u2019t as popular as Grand Theft Auto Online<\/em>, isn\u2019t dead. Well, not entirely<\/em>. The online cowboy simulator just got a small update that adds a few creepy missions and promises more to come later. – Zack Zwiezen Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Image: Epic Games \/ Kotaku<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Buy now, pay later payment provider Affirm has partnered with video game commerce company Xsolla and will soon allow people to pay off in-game purchases of $50 or more via payment plans. – Zack Zwiezen Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Image: Romero Games<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Back in 2022<\/a><\/span>, John Romero of Doom<\/em> fame announced he was working on a new first-person shooter IP in Unreal Engine 5 for a \u201cmajor publisher.\u201d Three years later, the studio says it\u2019s canceled and employees claim the latest wave of massive cuts at Xbox are to blame<\/a><\/span>, with one designer calling the news \u201c[a] massive, sudden & unexpected hit on a Project that was innovative, going strong and most importantly fun.\u201d – Ethan Gach Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Kotaku Staff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image: Microsoft, 11bit Studios, FromSoftware \/ Kotaku, PlayStation \/ Kotaku, The Pok\u00e9mon Company \/ Kotaku, Blizzard Entertainment, Nintendo, Epic Games \/ Kotaku, Romero Games, Screenshot: Rockstar Games \/ Kotaku From mergers to memes, the landscape of interactive entertainment is always in motion. Here\u2019s your cheat sheet for the week\u2019s most important stories in gaming. Microsoft<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":860430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[171,1798,100207],"tags":[5299,129734],"class_list":{"0":"post-860429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-biggest","8":"category-entertainment","9":"category-kotakus","10":"tag-biggest","11":"tag-kotakus"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}